Advogato blog for mukshttp://www.advogato.org/person/muks/
Advogato blog for muksen-usmod_virguleTue, 31 Mar 2015 20:48:16 GMTMon, 17 Aug 2009 05:08:46 GMTSimple open source WinZix extractor programhttp://www.advogato.org/person/muks/diary.html?start=27
http://www.mukund.org/blog/2009/08/17/simple-open-source-winzix-extractor-program/<p>Today I wanted to extract a WinZix file. The WinZix software is known to be adware infested and is only available for Windows. Someone fortunately documented the WinZix file format, but only released another adware-free extractor written in Visual Basic which I couldn&#8217;t run on Linux or under Wine, even after struggling with Visual Basic&#8217;s runtime dependencies. And I <em>really</em> wanted to extract my WinZix file.</p>
<p>Here is <a href="http://www.mukund.org/unzix/unzix.c" >unzix</a>, a simple program to extract the contents of those .zix files. Compile and link against zlib.</p>
Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:27:46 GMTMy bookshelfhttp://www.advogato.org/person/muks/diary.html?start=26
http://www.mukund.org/blog/2009/07/25/my-bookshelf/<p>The other day, I got a bookshelf and today I filled it with books that were in boxes. This is what&#8217;s on my bookshelf. I&#8217;m late to the bookshelf meme, but though I had books, I didn&#8217;t have a proper bookshelf and a digital camera before.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/img_0913.jpg" ><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-36" title="img_0913" src="http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/img_0913-681x1024.jpg" alt="img_0913" width="681" height="1024" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/img_0917.jpg" ><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-37" title="img_0917" src="http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/img_0917-1024x681.jpg" alt="img_0917" width="1024" height="681" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/img_0920.jpg" ><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-38" title="img_0920" src="http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/img_0920-1024x681.jpg" alt="img_0920" width="1024" height="681" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/img_0922.jpg" ><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-39" title="img_0922" src="http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/img_0922-1024x681.jpg" alt="img_0922" width="1024" height="681" /></a></p>
Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:09:02 GMTPhotos from recent dayshttp://www.advogato.org/person/muks/diary.html?start=25
http://www.mukund.org/blog/2009/07/23/photos-from-recent-days/<div id="attachment_29" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 692px"><img class="size-full wp-image-29" title="img_0905" src="http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/img_0905.jpg" alt="Bookshelf which was delivered yesterday. Now I have to fill it with books :)" width="682" height="1024" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Bookshelf which was delivered yesterday. Now I have to fill it with books <img src='http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p></div>
<div id="attachment_30" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 1290px"><img class="size-full wp-image-30" title="img_0907" src="http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/img_0907.jpg" alt="AC power surge caused the power strip to burn out. Thankfully, nothing on it was affected." width="1280" height="852" /><p class="wp-caption-text">AC power surge caused the power strip to burn out. Thankfully, nothing on it was affected.</p></div>
Sat, 4 Jul 2009 19:09:37 GMTWhere the mind is without fearhttp://www.advogato.org/person/muks/diary.html?start=24
http://www.mukund.org/blog/2009/06/21/where-the-mind-is-without-fear/<p>The world seems to be a very clouded place today. One day, when India was facing its struggles, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore" >Tagore</a> wrote this:</p>
<blockquote><p>Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;<br />
Where knowledge is free;<br />
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;<br />
Where words come out from the depth of truth;<br />
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;<br />
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;<br />
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action&#8230;<br />
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.</p></blockquote>
<p>It&#8217;s easy to take freedom for granted, when a person has had it all his life. Some sit by and watch it fade away. Others manipulate it and make it fade away. Some struggle to hold on to it, or to get it back for everyone.</p>
<p>History shows that when you lose freedom, it is very difficult to get it back.</p>
Mon, 8 Dec 2008 20:09:07 GMTTiramisu and omelettehttp://www.advogato.org/person/muks/diary.html?start=23
http://www.mukund.org/blog/2008/12/08/tiramisu-and-omelette/<p>Was bragging to someone recently about cooking skills. So here&#8217;s proof from a couple of days ago <img src='http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<div id="attachment_55" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 310px"><a href="http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/img00023.jpg" ><img class="size-medium wp-image-55" title="img00023" src="http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/img00023-300x225.jpg" alt="Tiramisu" width="300" height="225" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Tiramisu</p></div>
<div id="attachment_56" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 310px"><a href="http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/img00020.jpg" ><img class="size-medium wp-image-56" title="img00020" src="http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/img00020-300x225.jpg" alt="Onion omelette made for Kiran" width="300" height="225" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Onion omelette made for Kiran</p></div>
Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:08:48 GMTTinyproxy developer list membership losthttp://www.advogato.org/person/muks/diary.html?start=22
http://www.mukund.org/blog/2008/09/17/tinyproxy-developer-list-membership-lost/<p><em>With a brown paper bag over my head</em>, I&#8217;m sorry to announce that the <a href="http://www.banu.com/mailman/listinfo/tinyproxy-developers-list" >Tinyproxy developer mailing list</a>&#8217;s membership information has been lost. The list was deleted by mistake today. <a href="http://www.banu.com/pipermail/tinyproxy-developers-list/" >The list archives</a> were backed up and these were restored to a freshly created list, but unfortunately, the list&#8217;s membership wasn&#8217;t backed up (this didn&#8217;t make the list of things to backup!). I don&#8217;t know how else to announce to all the list members that they have to re-subscribe.</p>
<p> <img src='http://www.mukund.org/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_sad.gif' alt=':(' class='wp-smiley' /></p>
Fri, 12 Sep 2008 12:12:00 GMTTinyproxy 1.6.4 releasedhttp://www.advogato.org/person/muks/diary.html?start=21
http://www.mukund.org/blog/2008/09/12/tinyproxy-164-released/<p><a href="http://www.banu.com/tinyproxy/" >Tinyproxy</a> 1.6.4 was <a href="http://www.banu.com/pipermail/tinyproxy-developers-list/2008-August/000645.html" >released recently</a>, after a gap of nearly 4 years since the last release. It contains several bug fixes and current users are encouraged to upgrade to it.</p>
<p>For those who haven&#8217;t heard of Tinyproxy, it is a light-weight HTTP proxy daemon for POSIX operating systems, written with special consideration for users with low resources such as embedded applications. It can be modified easily too.</p>
Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:12:54 GMTState of Transmission on Windowshttp://www.advogato.org/person/muks/diary.html?start=20
http://www.mukund.org/blog/2008/09/11/transmission-on-windows/<p>I&#8217;ve been working on getting <a href="http://www.transmissionbt.com/" >Transmission</a> up and running on Windows. After a ton of patching, it now builds and works to an extent under Wine. There are still some bugs in the libevent and I/O code which need to be ironed out. However, I don&#8217;t have the mojo to complete it in a hurry. Debugging issues under Windows sucks. And doing things differently for Windows sucks.</p>
<p>On a related note, it&#8217;s easy to build a GCC cross compiler under Linux to build win32 apps. One can build GTK+ apps and make installers for them, all from the comfort and elegance of Linux. However, an up-to-date document of the process and some gotchas to help the programmer would be helpful and I&#8217;ll post a link to such a document shortly.</p>
Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:06:59 GMTNew Banu logohttp://www.advogato.org/person/muks/diary.html?start=19
http://www.mukund.org/blog/2008/07/25/new-banu-logo/<p><a href="http://bomahy.nl/hylke/blog/" >Hylke Bons</a> drew a new logo for Banu yesterday.
I had requested him for a cuddly brown bear, and adapting Linus's words for Tux, said the bear
should look contented and happy, as if it's just had a lot of honey :)
Hylke replied within 2 hours with this logo image which is the sweetest
bear I've ever seen. It even seems to be hiding a jar of honey behind it :)
It's amazing he created it in so little time. Thank you Hylke!</p>
<p><img src="http://www.mukund.org/files/archive/2008/07/25/banu-the-bear.png" alt="Banu logo" /></p>
Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:10:45 GMTFirefox 3 and SSL certificateshttp://www.advogato.org/person/muks/diary.html?start=18
http://www.mukund.org/blog/2008/07/05/firefox3-and-ssl-certificates/<p>I should not single out only Firefox 3 for this issue, but because it's the browser I use, it gets criticised.
Recent UI usability changes in web browsers towards handling self-signed and other &ldquo;invalid&rdquo;
SSL certificates leave a lot to be desired.</p>
<p>Take my use-case. I want to use a HTTPS secured connection for <a href="https://bugzilla.banu.com/" ><tt>bugzilla.banu.com</tt></a>
(which is a website I setup for my projects). I don't have the dough to get my wildcard certificate for <tt>*.banu.com</tt> signed by a CA.
So I use a self-signed certificate. This self-signed certificate does not mean that the bugzilla website accessible via HTTPS is any more malicious
to <em>any</em> end-user than the main Banu website at <tt>www.banu.com</tt> accessible via HTTP.</p>
<p>I want new visitors who use my Bugzilla to be able to use it as any other plain-old website without suggestion that it's somehow malicious.
Google or Wikipedia for example wouldn't like it if the browser screamed &ldquo;This host uses an invalid security certificate&rdquo; when someone
visited <tt>http://www.google.com/</tt> or <tt>http://en.wikipedia.org/</tt>.</p>
<p>HTTPS is simply an access protocol here. It can serve both authenticated and unauthenticated sessions. This whole issue would seem even
more stupid if we didn't have HTTPS but something like STARTTLS
for HTTP. Most web surfers do not know the difference between HTTP and HTTPS. They would go by what their browser shows them about whether
a website is to be trusted or not. Current browser wording for messages that are displayed when a certificate is not signed by a known CA leans
towards suggesting that somehow the remote website is malicious. A website using a self-signed certificate may not be malicious. In fact, statistics
lean towards the fact that most websites are not malicious. Browsers would gladly present <em>any</em> content using HTTP, but when an
unknown certificate is reached, it's now a stopping point and you now need to do a lot of actions in a browser such as Firefox 3 to get past to the website.</p>
<p>A more usable UI would be to simply indicate that the session was protected when the certificate is deemed as valid (via any padlock
icons, or the green/blue Extended Validation info, or the yellow URL bar), and allow a user to simply browse the website otherwise without
indicating in the UI that there is any secure connection, without having to go through any extra steps to accept a self-signed certificate.</p>
<p>This would raise some questions. What about forms which post to HTTPS URLs? Would having the browser stop you when it reaches an
&ldquo;invalid&rdquo; certificate be correct to stop the browser posting to such URLs? No, this won't serve any purpose, as users hardly
ever check the action URL of a form to see if it's SSL protected or not before submitting form information. They would look to trust the
page which contains the form in the first place, to do the right thing.</p>
<p>With the change suggested above, a user visiting my bugzilla website would not see any icons or other UI indicators in her browser
to say that her connection is <em>authenticated</em> even though she's using HTTPS. Nothing would discourage her from using my
website. On the other hand, if I add my self-signed wildcard certificate to my list of personal certificates in Firefox, I can have an
indiciation that my session is authenticated.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> In response to my own post, it occured to me that someone could hijack and force a renegotiation
with a malicious server and get posted form fields if the above was implemented, i.e., if your form was served by an authenticated
website, but when you submitted it, a MITM attack directed the posted form to a different webserver. So this is probably a bad idea.</p>